Of course it would rain.
Link's chest was afire with tightening pain, and the pinpricks of icy water from the sky didn't help. His muscles were trying to vibrate out of his clammy skin. Link snarled to the churning clouds above them, to keep his teeth from chattering. They were alone. Navi left hours ago to find help. He didn't want to move with his bruised sternum, Navi couldn't lift anything, and so, the only thing Link could do was wait. Wait for another ambush. Wait for hypothermia to cull them. Wait for the concussion to do even more damage to Gerrard.
"Mother?"
Link flinched. Ow, he groaned silently, chest muscles igniting with the sudden movement. Who had spoken? He cast his eyes to the side as far as he could, but there was nothing else around except the thief and the dead tektites. His heart was thundering. Or was it a storm?
"Mother, please. Help."
Link had to know. Clamping his teeth, he incrementally turned his head sideways towards Gerrard to look at him. He was facedown, and blood was all but invisible in the stormy twilight.
Dizzy with pain, Link turned his head again and shut his eyes. The raindrops were now a steady drizzle, and he couldn't blink fast enough to keep water from his eyes. Prison seems so comfortable compared to this. Link wanted to be furious, but there was no effort left in him for that. He drifted on the mountain top, dying of exposure. Breathing hurt. Movement hurt. He suspected even if someone found them, talking would be excruciating. So cold…Like one of those fall days in the forest when the rain soaked into every surface, and thin autumn sunbeams didn't touch the seeping chill. He smelled leaf loam and decay, vaulting him back for a second. How did he forget? Saria was always the best at collecting the brightest leaves. The squelch of muck. Acorn bread. Winter-laden winds…Link's only indication of his tears was the uncomfortable tightening behind his eyeballs.
He had absolutely no way to use his newfound magical song on the ocarina. Not that Saria could help him, aside from talking at him one last time. But it was enough that he got to see her again. One modicum of peace, at least. Link shuddered, trying not to inhale from the burst of agony across his heart. A distant roll of thunder elaborated until it sounded like it was on top of them. Through his eyelids, he saw the pulse of lightning and a new chorus of thunder grew so unbearably loud he felt his eardrums flexing in response.
The pragmatic side of Link warned of the litany of thunder-ailments that came along with being struck by lightning. Death was fastest, and most merciful. Paralysis, numbness, loss of faculty…None of it was pretty, worse than any crushed limb. Numb and alone, they were totally out in the open, the only grounded objects on a mountain top. Then again, lightning might be faster than hypothermia.
Link prayed for the first time.
Please, Farore, Nayru and Din, if this reaches you, don't let the storm hurt us.
It was silent, and the rain couldn't touch his skin. Link felt no pain in his chest. Helpless, he couldn't control his disappointment. There was no pain. He prayed, and he died. Figures. His eyes opened and he sat up to observe his apparent afterlife.
The setting was much the same, granite blocks, boulders and walls and dead mountain spiders, but their bodies seemed different. If you counted glowing as different.
Link was disconcertingly and distinctly shimmering green, and Gerrard's prone body was iridescent, as if a single divine hand hadn't settled on him yet. That was enough to shake him down to his toenails. Link didn't even know there were gods two months ago. And the first and only answer to his prayer was death.
What happens now? Link watched the storm clouds roiling towards them, a cavalcade of miseries, every challenge ready to claim a pound of flesh. Somehow, the storm was both real, and a metaphor. Lucky them.
"Cheer up, it never rains all the time," Gerrard said.
Or rather, a spirit said from above Gerrard's body, swirling from nothing into a foggy figure.
Too morose to combat the inappropriate cheeriness, Link replied in a flat voice: "I know that. But it's too late."
The other spirit's face soured in surprise. "Too late? You're not dead yet."
Link's heart leavened like Lon bread. "But then, what is this?"
"Oh, he probably won't remember this when you two wake up. You had your own divine dream, and this is his," said the indistinct spirit, gesturing to the lack of rain. And the glowing bodies.
"You're not Gerrard."
"Yup." The spirit put an index finger on its chin, considering Link. "This was one of the few moments that I was allowed contact, when your grasps on life in this world are loose. For now, I get to watch. Mostly. And you were close enough to get some backlash. Don't get me wrong, you missed the good stuff between us two. This is the limbo, the in-between. Comes with being an Agent, you're all super-sensitive to these things. It'll only get stronger throughout your life, too." Link heard the mischievous smile in those words. "Don't try it too often. Navi's almost back."
"Did she find help?"
"Always the spoilsport…She does have assistance, but," the spirit was slipping away. "...they won't be much help, for a time."
Don't ask what it means, Link ordered himself. Spirits were cryptic for a reason. He'd heard enough stories in his life to know that asking a fading presence to explain further only led to silence, and frustration.
The physical world was rushing back to him, along with buckets of cold rain dousing him and a wailing wind scurrying away with every ounce of warmth in his body. Oddly enough, he was starting to feel warmer. His tunic was stiflingly hot, though it was rain-soaked. That wasn't good.
Link was beyond shivering. The rain was so chokingly thick he was graying out in between inhalations, panting and aspirating equal measures of water and air. They only needed to survive until Navi came. Survive. Survive. Survive. The word echoed in his heartbeat, strong despite his will's weakness.
Bright blue lightning flashed again, and Link screwed his eyelids tighter, anticipating thunder's wake. But the rumble came from the ground, it seemed. Link opened one eye, blinded by an ultramarine light. He grinned.
Navi would never forget the sight of Link's rictus skull-smile when he saw her. She would never forgive herself for leaving him in his condition, to allow this teenage boy to slide so close to death he borrowed the reaper's own mask. Though the pain lancing her heart was undeniable guilt, she refused its mastery over her. There were more important things first.
Cindra hurried to the blond, knelt down and reached into Link's pack underneath him, With her other arm, she shielded his face from the rain with a flap of her dark cloak. She also studied his features, noting the shallow breathing and lack of shivering.
"Impa gave us a few potions. The blue ones are in glass, the red are in clay," Navi instructed the thankfully familiar Gerudo woman.
"Ouch!" Cindra barked and withdrew her hand. "Yes, I found glass."
Navi's heart dropped like a stone. "The tektite smashed them."
Cindra carefully tried to ease the pack away from Link, but she couldn't hold up the cover and extricate the bundle at the same time. "Gerngnt! Shelter, now!"
Gerngnt and a smaller Goron were already in motion, flipping aside big rocks with the ease of one fluffing downy quilts. They casually stacked boulders into a makeshift cavern in the lee of the pass wall.
"Tennorra?" Cindra said with some reserve. Navi was watching the man tending to Gerrard, checking his vital signs. He was pale, wearing the same dark cloak as Cindra. When Navi met the serendipitous band fleeing Market Town, she sensed in him some hidden potential, like a coiled spring or a taut leather string. Now, it was his grave expression that gave her pause.
He briefly met Cindra's eyes, shook his head, and returned his attention to Gerrard, wiping away the blood that looked black in the night.
"Navi, they must be inside. Death is near."
Navi, for the first time, could not bring herself to hear Link's thoughts. Deep down, she knew the mantra he was already repeating, but the sprite shut the window in their mind. His eyes widened, she saw it happening in minute detail, and they searched for her. He was asking why, why, why would she do this?
Foremost, Navi was a spirit of knowledge and unbias. She had to be impartial to fairly gauge this situation. Against her heart's advice, Navi withdrew from her friend. Which boy was closer to death?
As soon as the Gorons finished their task, the wiry man assisted Cindra, and lifted Link by his armpits and ankles. Feeling even more disheartened, the fairy watched the blond boy choke on a scream and faint before they got him over the shelter's threshold. They laid him on a stone bench, leaned him forward, and gently removed his bear-wrapped pack and the smaller Goron moved in with a woolen blanket like the next nurse on shift. With grace and a giant's gentleness, his huge fingers tucked the covering around Link, arranging his neck and head to rest on its side.
Navi saw, in a gut wrenching flash, the same funerary scene at the Lon's Homestead, but with Link beneath white linen. And then the vision was gone.
Gerrard was totally limp as they moved him. His head lolled, and there was no reaction when Cindra and Tennorra laid him feet to feet with Link on the same stone bench built into the shelter. This time, her vision brought the image of Gerrard lying inert on a stone bier below ground.
"Is there an antidote for tektite poison? Just how dangerous is it to Hylians?" Navi prodded the Gorons inside the shelter.
Gerngnt answered from a seat in the corner, shades of trepidation shaping his words, "Untreated for too long, heart may stop, brain might not recover. Lucky, poison very slow and…not know Hylian word for 'taking-too-long-flow-of-work-anger.'"
"Inefficient?"
He shrugged. "Tektites attack in group, poison attack first, but body absorbs, dilute. Not strong enough unless more poison added. Boy was only bit one time?"
Navi nodded. "The poison would have done more by now if he'd been bitten by other tektites?"
The Gorons shared a glance. "Probably." Gerngnt admitted.
"Very slow poison" Uurrum assured her. He sat by the entrance on the ground. "Goron remedy for Hylian usually lichen poultice. Lichen very strong, good not use always."
"Do Gorons have healing magic?" Navi asked bluntly.
Uurrum replied just as factually, "For Gorons, yes. For flesh? No. Use medicines, toxic for Hylian body."
Every minute they sat protected from the rain and elements were more time in which Gerrard was suffering a head injury, and Link could hardly breathe for his cracked sternum. The shelter offered to them was miles above a tent wedged between granite chips. It took most of the available path space, but the wind was blocked from every angle. Cindra's treasure from her girlhood was a clever steel and enamel brazier that took very little fuel to produce a magnificent glow of strong heat. All assorted and conscious present warmed themselves on a fire built from charcoal and oil tinder. Even with the hulking presence of the Gorons, there was ample room for the woman and man accompanying them. He was cocooning Gerrard with a blanket, though he left the afflicted right arm exposed, assessing the bite anew.
The two boys did not stir.
Cindra grabbed Link's pack. Rummaging into the shallow basket, she revealed amid curiously dry clothes and packets, only one earthen bottle of red potion remained.
"Which do you choose, Miss Navi?" Cindra was quick, and surgical with her words.
How could she? She flew to Gerrard, lifting an eyelid, and seeing his pupil slowly contract. How could she choose? She felt his pulse, and the red flesh around his tektite bite. How could she choose? She lay her little head on his chest, listened to his strong heartbeat. How could she choose? And then she looked at Link.
She knew exactly which one she wanted to immediately save. Link was undoubtedly less stable. He had been face up in the rain for hours, almost drowning on dry land. Gerrard, though he had been poisoned, did not appear to be in as tenuous a position, protected by his cloak and belongings during the storm.
"Link."
Cindra nodded, unstopping the healing concoction and administering it into Link's rain-soaked throat. He gulped the potion, almost choking, but relieved of his hypothermia within seconds. His body relaxed, and he breathed a little more deeply. Navi wasted no time before she asked of the Gorons:
"Should I be out gathering this lichen?"
Gerngnt and his brother nodded in tandem. "Uurrum and I will go. Know rocks it likes."
Relief and more hope than she deserved surged within Navi. She bowed and clenched her tiny hands in gratitude. "Thank you, Gerngnt. Whatever payment this is gonna take, I'll-"
Gerngnt stood up, grave but hopeful. "Is honor. Of Goron and Hylian. Bad form, other."
The Gorons exited swiftly.
Beyond useless, Navi could not help but to thank whatever forces were on their side. When she left the boys on the lonely outcrop, finding the Goron smith, his assistants and their messenger were more help from grace than she ever expected to find. It was simple to think four sets of hands would change the fates of her embryonic heroes. The matters at hand now, however, were anything but simple.
Could another gamble take the whole bet? "Cindra?" Navi pressed her luck.
"Hm." The dusky woman was shaking out her black hair by the door.
"Do the…Do you have any healing ability?"
Tennorra coughed, and sniffled loudly.
The Gerudo woman silently contemplated the man, and then the fairy's inquiry for a minute, staring from the side of her left eye. After a dozen tense heartbeats, she faced Navi directly. "I have no great magic, nor medicine. Heart and mind and body do not need them for healing, in Gerudo way. Spirit touching is slow work, but which do I wake?"
Her mouth and tongue were formed around the L of Link's name when the single syllable got stuck there. Navi closed her mouth, thinking hard. Her earlier snap decision was reverberating in her ears. Guts twisting with the shame of temptation and favorites, Navi said, "Gerrard."
Unabashed, Tennorra was surveying the fairy. He wanted to say something, she could almost hear the words behind his lips, but instead, he kept them secret, and moved aside from Gerrard's makeshift cot.
Color me intrigued, Navi ruminated, and promised herself to ask later. For now, the fairy put on her most sincere mask. "Cindra, would you mind attempting your healing please?"
She bowed her head. "Unlike the Goron, I don't make charity."
"Anything we are able to give you, we will," Navi replied immediately, hovering closely to the Gerudo. "Please. Anything we can do for you, Cindra, name your price. Their lives are worth all of ours."
Cindra snorted. "Every life is worthy. But I help you."
"Thank you, I can't begin-"
Holding up a hand to quiet the platitudes, she said, "I will need silence for minutes, then I hum. I will share his dreams, and guide him to waking world. Please, do not wake us. The danger is grave. We must sleepwalk together, and only together do we return." Cindra's face was wooden. Her temple was visibly pulsing. It was her only admission of the fear in her heart.
"Do not move, do not change anything around us. Gerudo can naturally walk between worlds, but Hylians get lost. Be anchors. Be the rocks. Be here, even your thoughts. I will return with Gerrard."
Navi herself sat on a ledge above the heater to observe.
The cinnamon lady stood rigid but gracefully soft in her travel wrappings, and with a flutter of northern wool, Cindra sat at the head of Gerrard's bench. Her legs curled beneath her in a practiced lattice that made Navi's thighs ache, but the fairy felt how strongly earth magic radiated up into the pose. Cindra outstretched her hands, resting them above her knees, palms up, exhaling carefully.
Like the pressure of a cold front on the hot plains, Navi felt the invocation of fire and storm magic, crowding close and oppressive. Cindra let her scalp relax. The invisible energy rushed out of her crown in upturning, leftward spirals, and her answer to this was a downward, right-handed spiral into the earth. The pressure within the shelter drastically lessened. She was anchored, above and below, and sprigs of earth magic unfolded from her palms. Small orange offshoots became a full blown kudzu-tangle of flickering sienna around Gerrard's head. She could clearly see that Cindra was a conduit for the earth, not a user of magic. She let the flow enrobe her spirit, dancing with it and seducing her way to a solution. Fascinating and not unlike the innate magic of the Forest Children, this Daughter of the Sand Goddess must have been a weighty loss for her people. But then again, Navi recalled Malon's origins, and the meager trade that enfolded her mother into Lon life.
With a little admonishment to her mind, Navi reverted her thoughts back to Cindra and Gerrard.
Her humming was ghostly and paper thin at first. She was grasping to find her way into Gerrard's dreams. She found some hidden pathway, and she tuned her song to their shared resonance. It was a droning, nasal tone that alternated between four or five microtones. She provided a stable base for untimely and strange punctuations in a low, eerie ululation.
"You wander far," Cindra rasped in the lucid dream. Her accent was so strong, Navi mistook it for mumbling at first. "All this way..." The kudzu tangle of magic was pulsing and weaving around her and Gerrard, tendrils fading and renewing. "Follow me, lost one….The worlds' edges are a blade…Don't slip."
One vine at a time, Cindra was stealing back the thief from death's door. Her song and the words she spoke in throaty bursts were guiding the magic down avenues Navi couldn't imagine, and slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the fires crept down Gerrard's prone form, inch by inch.
The bite wound was flickering with a tiny flame, and the vines around it were darkening, drawing some spiteful influence out. Her progress was halted for dozens of minutes, and the flame was growing higher, and the vines, even more crimson than before. Cindra pushed further.
It was wrapped around his wrists and thighs when, in the eeriest cascade of notes Navi had ever heard, Cindra's song and the fires were swept away. The woman was blinking awake, gasping, out of breath, slumping over.
Gerrard was not awakened.
She did not meet Navi's eyes, focused on an impossible horizon.
"Cindra," the fairy said warningly.
"I…There was a woman…standing over him. I tried…singing her song, but…" Her palms disappeared when she clenched her hands. They impulsively opened and closed again.
"Cindra, what happened?" Urgency was driving a break into Navi's tone. "You said you'd bring him back."
"I tried," she said, throat dry. "I tried. I…I was not allowed."
"Can't you go back under?" Urgent did not begin to describe her need.
But the dark head was already shaking. "Must wait for Goron remedy." Now, with fear and shame tightening her eyes, Cindra looked at Navi. "He is too far. He is not mine to save."
Navi was aghast. Who, or what could possibly decide that? Sick with revelation, Navi knew she should have chosen Link this time. He might have been able to heal Gerrard. He has the talent. The situation could have been enough to spur a miracle-
"Will you try for Link?"
"Natural for Gerudo to spirit touch. Not easy!" Cindra covered her eyes and tears, shoulders beginning to shake.
Navi fell to the ground, stunned. With barely any agency, crying numbly, she asked Cindra, "He isn't…gone…right?"
"No, his body lives, but his spirit is not with us."
"Did you heal him fully?" Tennorra asked with no compunction.
Rocking to and fro on the stone cot, Cindra removed her palms from over her puffy eyes. "The poison requires more. I was not able to defeat it." She touched Gerrard's wound, wincing, confirming her failure.
Tennorra stood suddenly, and took off his cloak. "I guess we'll need some real help, then."
The fairy looked up, confused, abjectly hopeless. "I thought you were only a runner for Gerngnt."
"That is what I am, and what I offer." The eagle-nosed man spread his hands. Wry resignation painted him as a compassionate soul. "I can run ahead to Hackwater. But…"
"You don't want to go in the dark," Navi said for him. He shook his head, and she held up a hand.
"I don't blame you at all. These stupid rocks are bad enough in the daytime." He started to argue with her again, when she said: "Tennorra, what if I guide you? Is my light enough to see by, and get help?"
He did not answer immediately. "Do you think you could make it Hackwater before dawn? You would leave your charges, for as long as it will take for help to reach the campsite here?"
Now, she didn't hesitate. "They need healing. This week alone should have been enough for Link to call it quits, what with the stabbing, and prison, and his jaw, and his hand…And I have no idea what to do for Gerrard. I know they're not exactly fragile, but I can't take that risk. Warm, and sheltered, they have a chance of recovery. And if Hackwater is that close, then we should get going." And maybe outrun her conscience, too.
"I will keep them warm, and wait for Gerngnt and his brother," said Cindra, still sitting by Gerrard, sniffling and only gently crying.
"I have it on good authority," Navi said, drawing herself up and placing one tiny had on the woman's own hand. "That one should never owe more than two debts to a woman from the West." Clearing her throat, Navi finished, "We owe you everything, Cindra."
Blinking huge golden brown eyes, Cindra wiped her cheek and pierced Navi with the air of queen on high in her gaze. "And I will collect."
Navi smiled briefly, and inspected her charges one last time, assured they were breathing and in good hands. Remembering the connection to Link, she opened back up, but there was nothing besides unconscious gray in his mind. Navi closed the window again, in case this foray with the runner required all of her strength. She wiped at her eyes and nose, and turned sadly to the Hylian.
"Well then. Let's see if you can keep up, Miss Navi." Tennorra stretched for a moment or two, twisting his body and flexing his calves and feet.
"Me? Tighten your sandal straps, Tenny." She punched her fist into her open hand in a challenge, smirking in spite of her still-wet face. "Do you need anything?"
"Naught but the spirit of the race," Tennorra intoned, and was instantly absent from the shelter.
Navi tore out after the blur. She was battered by the rain, but far too focused to let it stop her. Maneuvering like a hawk between obstacles, she saw ahead of her the light colored clothing of the man pounding the wet ground with incessant feet. She pulled abreast with the running man. "Do you mind?"
"Not at all!" He shouted, and sprinted even further ahead.
Navi drew on all her knowledge of movement and economy, streamlining her motions and pushed forward with all she was worth. Her own chest was tight with the unending progress, but her boys were all she had! Furiously flapping and gasping, Navi dug deep in her own reserves to catch up.
The sprinter was in her sphere of light again. Rocks and outcrops going by told Navi just how insanely speedy her competitor was. She edged forward again, but he put on a fresh spurt of speed to stay ahead. There was no slowing down, and they kept pace while she realized the elevation was lowering again. Trees soughing in the night wind were adding their own voices to the driving rain and distant thunder. They had to be close to Hackwater, the logging village with the restricted wellsprings belonging to the Royal Family.
Hehe, at least the younger Goriyo had taught them something vaguely useful.
Like dawn on the Short Night, the sputtering torches alight on the gateway into Hackwater were the most glorious points of light Navi had ever seen. Tennorra had already pulled far ahead, touching the wood of the massive door, but it hardly mattered. She flew to the top of it, to the guard dozing at attention, and yelled in his face before collapsing on his tiny table.
He snorted awake, looking around, found her light, and his eyes bulged. "A fairy? What're ye doing here?"
"I'm…Navi…That's Tennorra…Boys…on North…Gate pass…Need help," she gulped air, hoping her little lungs wouldn't always hurt this way. "Impa…sent us."
"Impa? Tennorra? Open the gate, lads, it's Gerngnt's party!" He brayed the order into the pouring rain, shaking his fist. "Listless shavers, the lot o' ye, get out there and let 'em in!"
"Gerngnt…stayed behind…Just me…and Tennorra." She was beginning to get her wind back, lungs and heart pumping hard. Navi sat up, shaking the water from her wings.
He cocked his head, scratching his neck. "And someone needs help? On North Gate pass?" He almost didn't ask, but then he spat, " It's not that Western mongrel is it?"
"What! No, Cindra is fine."
"En't what I meant, but go on," the guard prompted gruffly.
Ire replaced adrenaline for a second, and she felt a sliminess to the conversation she didn't like. "It's my companions, two teenage boys. We're working with Impa, and Gerngnt was in the area when my friends got attacked by tektites-"
"Oh, Nayru, how bad is it? And how long ago was this?" His relief about the cause of the emergency rubbed at her like jagged sandstone, but for the boys sake, she had to act for them.
"Gerrard was bitten, and Link was crushed. Tennorra and I left Gerngnt's camp about an hour ago."
He froze, mouth agape. "From North Gate Pass?" the guard questioned again, confusion pushing the timbre of his sentence into a whole new register.
"Yes! Please, if you don't believe me, we have papers from the castle, but they need healers right away!"
"I don't doubt ye, Miss Navi. But…North Gate Pass is two days hike from here."
"Two-" She stopped, all sense of reality shattered and zipped down to Tennorra, who was stretching inside of the palisades. "Just what are you?"
"I tried to explain-"
"Explain!" She exploded in his face, flaring and throwing motes of light in all directions. "You didn't say anything! Two days! You knew how far it was! You knew how long this would take, and that's two damnable days that they'll…" She withered into herself. She stranded them again. Maybe Gerngnt and Uurrum had found the lichen for Gerrard. Maybe Cindra was trying at this very moment to heal Link instead now. Navi just couldn't quite hold onto those hopes.
She swayed in the air, disbelieving of the distance between her and her boys. Two days. "How did we make it that far before sunrise?" The sound of her voice in her ears was odd. Muffled.
Tennorra said with no emotion, "I chose a terrible fate when I was younger, thinking magic was the answer to my dreams. Gifted with feet and the power of the wild is very useful to those who like to remain unseen."
"And you can only use it when you're in competition. How cruel." Navi sympathized for only a second, then felt the return of her rage. Her head pounded. "Race you back."
Tennorra smiled, but the rain made it look like he was crying. "Nice try. But I beat you by one second. I will never be able to race you again."
Navi was stricken. Even as she lost her grip on hope, she flung out a mental lifeline. Connecting to the mind and soul of the misplaced Hylian boy from the forest, Navi shouted at him:
"HEY!"
Totally drained and exhausted beyond her capacity, Navi needed rest, too. Steadfast and desperate, she held onto the thread of connection, watching her friend twitch in his sleep.
"LISTEN!"
Another twitch. She gathered her will to shout again, but a deep, dark hole began to swallow her. Navi fell from the air, light dimming until Tennorra could barely see her in the soggy gray predawn. He caught her in his hands, leaving the soldiers around him in the dark as well.
Navi was rousing, mewling and flinging fists as she fought her way through a layer of softest downy feathers. It was stiflingly hot in her nest, and panting, she clawed into the air. Flapped, shaking away bits of fluff. Someone had put a small basket close to the hearth, and she smiled to see Tennorra in a bed, sleeping soundly nearby. And the last downy wrappings around her brain disappeared, and she flew to him, yanking hard on the tip of his long ear.
"Yaaaar!" he yelped and swatted at her before realizing who had done him wrong. He registered Navi in his brain, and the pity that filled his eyes repulsed her.
"Don't you dare," she warned. She could read the message there without the explanation.
"I…"
"No." She refused to hear it.
"Navi, I'm sorry, but the boys-"
"No!" She yelled, covering her ears. Curled in the air. How did things spiral so quickly? With a sob, the fairy reached out to her forest companion. She felt nothing.
Tennorra hesitated before speaking, instead busying himself with his blankets and getting out of bed. He pulled on a tunic. "Navi."
"Where are they, Tennorra? I need to see the bodies." She needed to hear it. She didn't want to.
"We…don't know. The Gorons and Cindra are gone, too."
"Gone?! Where?" She howled.
"All that was left was a pile of stones."
"But why?!"
"As soon as I would have awakened, I was going to race someone else to Kakariko Village, or even Cor Darun, if I have to. We all need to know what happened, and find out why they bypassed Hackwater."
"How could they possibly-"
"Goron craft is far beyond the Hylian skill in traversing these mountains." He wiped his face with a cloth and water from the table basin, avoiding the fairy's stare. "They could be anywhere. As soon as they are within spitting distance of any village, we should know."
"And you'd do this out of the goodness of your heart, or something?" Navi was hopeful she could toss him further than trust him at this point. "Do you work for the Sheikah? Is this more of Impa's meddling?"
She saw the same expression he gave Cindra in the shelter: a long, thoughtful stare that was clearly calling her an idiot. "If I were, I wouldn't be able to tell you that, and since I'm not, I'll tell you this is not Impa's meddling."
Navi was stopped cold. Those were her own words to Link, coming back to her. She grimaced. Damnable irony. "Talk."
"I was…on a different assignment. Events have taken a turn no one saw coming, and that's worrisome. For Cindra to go with them, that unfortunately adds another flavor to the abduction, in some eyes."
"You don't think she had anything to do with it?" Navi speared with no remorse.
"You do?" Tennorra did not hide his sentiments.
"Well…I thought, a Gerudo, and with Ganondorf-"
The man made an ugly noise at Navi. "She was cast out. Cindra had no desire to be a Gerudo again."
"You're lovers." Navi could see the tragedy there, too, listening to the words between his words, and wanting the hurt in her heart to be outside of her.
He doled out a venomous glower. "She, Gerngnt and I have been business partners for a decade. She ended our personal arrangements before then."
"And you trust her and the Gorons?"
"With my life, and more," he said simply. The conviction unfortunately, left Navi little doubt. And that just wasn't fair.
"Why did you have to get tangled up with us?" she let herself whine, grossly horrified by where her choices were leading them.
"Hylians, Gorons and Gerudos, caught in Sheikah plots are helpless to Necessity." Then he raised his eyebrows at her, and rolled his eyes.
Suddenly, she replayed his double talk, to put his words through a new filter. Her eyes widened, and she sniffled. "Are they scrambling to fix this mess? Or is this…expected?"
Since that first meeting between them, Tennorra looked warmly at her. "Like a cook who's dropped a dozen eggs on the floor, I've never seen my benefactors so frazzled before."
"Well, good for them and meddling with us in any case," While she was relieved that the assistance from the smith's company was planned, the disappearance was not. So. "How do we even proceed? I can't believe they would just abandon the camp," Navi couldn't imagine what might have spurred them to pack up two invalid patients and not leave any kind of message. "And when the Gorons turn up…I'll get word of it? Right?"
"I'm sure you will."
With a bleary smile, she burst into tears. "Thanks, I'm just-"
"No, don't worry," Tennorra soothed. These two days haven't been easy for anyone."
Hiccoughing and terrified, she wished she knew where her boys were.
Gerngnt and Uurrum arrived back at their camp just in time. Slapping a wet lump of lichen against Gerrard's forearm, Uurrum bundled his limbs tight against his body with his blanket.
"What is happening? Cindra would have blurted, but Gerngnt put his huge hand over her mouth. Much taken aback, she understood his urgency, and asked for no further explanation.
Uurrum repeated the procedure even more gently for Link. They shoved the assorted supplies into their cavernous packs, and slung the poor boys onto their backs. The rain had finally let up in the early morning. Not good for tracks, but where they were climbing, there would be no tracks.
The rumbling of the earth was clear to the mountain men: without action, these boys would die. Navi left on her own trial with the man of cursed spaces. It was up to them and Cindra to carry on her task for now. With one huge, ring-encrusted finger, the smith carefully poked their pile of rocks, knowing the precise distribution of materials. With that singular prod, the structure wobbled and collapsed into an undistinguished rock field on a mountain path. Cindra was beside them, garbed for the road. Gerngnt scooped her up, and put her on his shoulder. She perched cozily against his wide cheek.
The Gorons melted into the sheer stone of North Gate Pass, and watched the band of Gerudo trackers in gray silk eddy and flow through the high walls of the passage. They combed over every inch, sniffed each tuft of grass for signs of their quarry, and found nothing to be relished. Even the scattered pile of rocks which had just been a shelter was too cold to warrant a second look. Continuing with their mission, they hunted towards Hackwater.
As soon as they were beyond the hearing of those in gray, Cindra asked of Gerngnt, "Why not go to village?"
He did not answer in a way she understood, choosing to give her a rejoinder in rolling, guttural Goron.
"These are two of the 'Four who Shake the Earth.' It is an ancient, respectable duty to attend to them in any capacity. We of the Northern Mountains are a people who live in rock, and we understand immeasurable weights and the scales required to utilize them. We are now keenly aware of the balance these two would upset if they died. How can soft people not hear the will of the Earth? Long ears, or short ones, are privy to the words of gods, but stone? I laugh at the thought of any besides some wizened masons, and one boy from the eastern forest, appreciating rock and land and geology.
"Men of green hills watch, but never see. Landslides are emergencies, unexpected and terrible tragedies, but we of the Northern Mountains can see the landslide long before it happens, and plan for the path of change. These young ones are the indicators of the landslide, and have been so since before they, and you and we were born. Uurrum and I are simply on the path of change. I don't know precisely where the rocks will settle, but we will know when we reach the place they are meant to reach."
Cindra smiled wistfully. She told him, in liquid, sibilant Gerudo, "I didn't catch a single word of that. Shame, it sounded so pretty. Mind repeating it in Hylian for me?"
"Would."
Her mouth popped into an "O."
"You never told me you could speak Gerudo, you clod!"
In chuckling, grumbling Hylian, Uurrum replied for his brother, "Never ask!"
A/N: Yooooo, I'm back again with another fun installment of "Beating up 13 year Olds for Fun" by J X. XDDDDDDD (Insert mad author laughing as she spins the universe to her liking.)
Can you tell I just reread a bunch of fic from, like, 2005? Takes me back. Thanks for reading! Please share and review!